Benjamin Sun van Tech Extreme heeft vandaag een artikel genaamd "3dfx: The Memories" online gezet waarin de levensloop van 3dfx wordt beschreven. Het verhaal begint bij de oprichting van 3dfx in 1994 en gaat dan door richting het jaar 2000 tot en met de overname. Ondertussen wordt er natuurlijk aandacht geschonken aan de verschillende kaarten die 3dfx heeft uitgebracht en wat voor invloed die hebben gehad op gamers wereld en 3dfx zelf. Hieronder een opwarmertje:
Gary Tarolli, Scott Sellers and a group of ex-SGI engineers founded 3dfx in 1994. At the time, 3d gaming as we know it was defined by id's DOOM. Doom and its followers basically spawned a new genre of gaming - the First Person Shooter. Looking back at it now, Doom was a pixilated mess compared to games today. The most popular videocards of the generation before 3dfx introduced their first chipset included the S3 Virge, the Rendition V100, the Matrox Mystique and the ATI Rage.
On launch of 3dfx's first videocard chipset, the Voodoo 1, 3dfx was thrust into the hardcore gamers spotlight. Well, actually, 3dfx helped define the very words “hardcore gamer.” Quake was released in the same year as the Voodoo1. Id created a version of Quake for OpenGL videocards called GLQuake. At the time of release of GL Quake and the Voodoo1 (well PowerVR was the other way rendering could have gone but obviously it was nowhere near as popular), 3dfx began their public history.
Introducing new features such as Glide (an API which served as a layer to allow 3dfx cards to run the games smoother and prettier (take Unreal as a example), multitexturing , the Voodoo1 enjoyed a unprecedented success. Many games were developed to run on "Glide" such as Tomb Raider, Star Wars Jedi Knight and Turok. 3dfx and it's partners Canopus, Diamond Multimedia and others who built Voodoo1 cards basically invented gaming on the PC as we know it today.